BIO

WHO I AM

I don’t accept global warming on faith: I crunch the data, I analyze the models, I help engineers and city managers and ecologists quantify the impacts.

The data tells us the planet is warming; the science is clear that humans are responsible; the impacts we’re seeing today are already serious; and our future is in our hands. As John Holdren once said, “We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. We’re going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required, and the less suffering there will be.”

WHAT I DO

I began my career with a B.Sc. in physics and astronomy from the University of Toronto. My first published papers were in the field of observational astronomy, on variable stars and galaxy clustering around quasars. As I was finishing my degree, I took a class in climate science with Danny Harvey, who had previously been a postdoc at NCAR with Steve Schneider, and he blew my mind. I didn’t realize climate science was based on the exact same basic physics – thermodynamics, non-linear fluid dynamics, and radiative transfer – I’d been learning in astrophysics. And I definitely didn’t realize that climate change wasn’t just an environmental issue – it’s a threat multiplier. It takes the most serious humanitarian issues confronting climate change today – hunger, poverty, lack of access to clean water, injustice, refugee crises and more – and it makes them worse. How could I not devote my time to helping fix this huge global challenge?

I switched gears and headed to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to work on a M.S. in atmospheric science with Don Wuebbles, a climate scientist well known for his leadership in policy-relevant science. Working with Don, my masters research focused on understanding human and natural sources of methane, and quantifying the contribution of methane and other non-CO2 greenhouse gases to emission reduction targets. After participating in a climate change assessment for the Great Lakes, I recognized the need for high-resolution climate projections to integrate into impact studies in areas ranging from ecosystems to energy. For my Ph.D., I refocused my research to survey and compare a broad range of the statistical downscaling methods often used to generate these projections: research that now feeds directly into my contribution to the World Meteorological Organization’s Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment for Empirical Statistical Downscaling, or WMO CORDEX-ESD. There’s no one like a scientist for generating long unpronounceable acronyms, is there?

Today, I am a climate scientist, a professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, part of the Department of Interior’s South-Central Climate Science Center. My research currently focuses on establishing a scientific basis for assessing the regional to local-scale impacts of climate change on human systems and the natural environment. To this end, I analyze observations, compare future scenarios, evaluate global and regional climate models, build and assess statistical downscaling models, and constantly strive to develop better ways of translating climate projections into information relevant to agriculture, ecosystems, energy, infrastructure, public health, and water resources.

I am also the founder and CEO of ATMOS Research, where we bridge the gap between scientists and stakeholders to provide relevant, state-of-the-art information on how climate change will affect our lives to a broad range of non-profit, industry and government clients. We work with a broad range of organizations, from Austin Water to Boston Logan Airport, to assess the potential impacts of climate change on their infrastructure and future planning.

I am an Oxfam America Sister of the Planet and a member of the steering committee of the International Drawdown Conference, “Research to Action: The Science of Drawdown,” and the Editorial Committee of Texas Tech University Press.

I serve on the Executive Summary Committee and was a convening and lead author for several chapters in the first and second volumes of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Fourth National Climate Assessment. The first volume was released in November 2017, and the second volume was released in November 2018 on Black Friday. Volume 1 is over 400 pages, so if you’d just like to read a one-page summary, click here!

I collect my invitations, organize them carefully, recommend a local scientist or request a video talk wherever possible (about 90% of the time!), and when I do travel, try to do as many talks as possible in the same location to minimize the carbon footprint per trip — since, like many scientists, travel is the biggest part of my carbon footprint. I’m very grateful for the amazing work of Climate Stewards, who I use to offset the remainder of my travel-related carbon emissions. As soon as details on these events are available, I post them as events on my Facebook page.

What do I do with the rest of my time? I research – here’s a webinar that talks about some of it – and write papers. I teach graduate classes and run the day to day activities of the Texas Tech Climate Science Center. And I spend a lot of time interacting with cities, stakeholders, and decision-makers to provide the climate information they need to prepare for the future. There’s never a dull moment.

These are all tremendous honours, for which I’m enormously grateful (and constantly surprised). What means the most to me personally, though, is when just one person tells me sincerely that they had never cared about climate change before, or even thought it was real: but now, because of something they heard me say, they’ve changed their mind. That’s what makes it all worth while.